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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28056924">Old Gods</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/blood%20bag%20boogie'>blood bag boogie (evil_bunny_king)</a>, <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/evil_bunny_king'>evil_bunny_king</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Ember Days [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Historical, Costume Parties &amp; Masquerades, F/M, Pre-Canon, banter and snark, dashing ridiculous man, nathaniel sewell sir, pre-turning Nate, save me a dance ms du mortain please, that crush is gonna sit with you my good man</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 15:42:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,016</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28056924</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/blood%20bag%20boogie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/evil_bunny_king</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A masquerade at the turn of the 18th century. Ava du Mortain meets Nathaniel Sewell and spares him a dance.</p><p>--</p><p>  <i>Twelfth night and there’s that taste of holly on the back of her tongue, a prickling in her hands.</i></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ava du Mortain &amp; Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell, Ava du Mortain/Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Ember Days [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1936339</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>The Ember Days</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Old Gods</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><a href="https://evilbunnyking.tumblr.com/post/634604326480920576/evilbunnyking-ava-feels-the-heat-from-the">Bona fide old god, Ava</a>, commissioned from the amazing artwinsdraws on Tumblr.</p>
    </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <a href="https://evilbunnyking.tumblr.com/post/634604326480920576/evilbunnyking-ava-feels-the-heat-from-the">Ava, bona fide Old God</a>
</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Ava first sees him he’s wearing a wreath of oak branches, holly berries woven into the dark, waxed leaves and vivid against the curls of his brown hair.</p><p>He’s across a room awash in powdered wigs, striking in green brocade and holding court with a couple costumed as a pair of mated swans. There are heavy, bladed feathers stitched into the shoulders of the man’s cloak, the woman’s muff threaded with feather down. She’ll have shed them by the end of the night, and Ava wonders how many layers the cascade of feathers have wriggled beneath, and how terribly they itch.</p><p>There’s something about him that catches her eye, in that moment. The red of the berries in his dark hair, perhaps. The life in his glittering gaze, caught in the candlelight. The smell of the woven oak saplings - fresh, still sticky with sap, a breath of green in the thick heat from the fireplace and the perspiring press of humanity and there’s a flicker of memory there, at the edge of her thoughts - of similar winters, long ago and not that far from here: holly on stone mantelpieces, the prick of the leaves in her hands.</p><p>He attends his companions with polite interest, despite the fact that even with the overlapping conversations filling the room she can hear that everything they spout is asinine. The woman giggles, tipsily, swaying on her feet and using the excuse to flutter her hand out against the wreathed man’s arm, her fingers smoothing purposefully to his elbow and he smiles and redirects the touch, expression unchanging. He extricates himself, stepping gracefully away, that breath of green slipping into the crowd once more.</p><p>And Ava feels the heat from the fireplaces again, the light flickering as guests stagger by, half-drunk as the night and year finds their age. There’s a stir to the room, an anticipation of the new century. She’s weathered too many already and she feels the weight of it, on nights such as this - light and life, fleeting, young. The sullen night pressing against the doors and windows, shut out, leaning in.</p><p>Twelfth night and there’s that taste of holly on the back of her tongue, a prickling in her hands.</p><p>She finds him again, at the edge of the room.</p><p>He picks up a crown of driftwood - she can smell the salt of it, the sun-bleached branches - and he places it carefully back onto his head over the wreath, using the fogging glass of a window to guide his movements. In the glittering reflection she sees him tease a few leaves back into place, the carved curve of the wood arching up around and branching into tines. Like antlers, she realises; Cernunnos made flesh- vivid and singular and <em> alive</em>.</p><p>And then his gaze flicks to hers.</p><p>She's no more than a smudge of darkness and spilled light on the edge of the frame - she knows this. A phantom outside of the crowd in red and black, long trousers, velvet cloak. He shouldn't be able to distinguish her from the other blurred shapes flowing over the glass, let alone find her gaze, not with his human eyes and the sputtering light of the candles and hearth, but-</p><p>He looks at her, the nearby candelabra glittering in his dark eyes. There's warmth in his cheeks, a flush warming his brown skin beneath his undone cravat and against the flutter of his pulse (she hears it through the crowd, a bird's beating wing), and when he smiles she feels something lurch in her chest, pulling her off-center, off-kilter. The sweetly downturned corners of his eyes crinkle. His lips curve, winestained and red and then he looks away and brushes the fallen leaves from his coat.</p><p>She sways in the wake of it, her hand falling to the table beside her.</p><p>Her fingers find the cool surface of her Bauta mask, abandoned on the nearby side table. She pulls it into her hands, thumbing the tied ribbons and the edged chin and considers- considers leaving, considers walking out right now, with her heartbeat stirring in her chest, pressing against her ribs.</p><p>Her gaze falls to her charge - laughing delightedly in a chair by the fire and not so subtly courting the companion he's craned so eagerly towards in conversation - and after taking a deep, steadying breath, she sighs.</p><p>Unnecessary as her presence here may be, she has been tasked with this flirt's protection. She will not shirk it, regardless of the… distractions. She will do her duty, as she has done before and tomorrow she will leave: to the ship moored in the harbor awaiting them, and then Holland, leaving England and its fogged streets behind.</p><p>There is a note of warning in the back of her mind, coiling in her chest, that it's been so long since she has been - <em> affected</em>. That reminds her of the centuries of distance, of stillness, that she'd forged between herself and that mire of humanity; that this is dangerous, that this is fluttering, bright <em>potential</em>- and she closes off the thought, refocusing on the room.</p><p>She hears a crack from the mask in her hands, unsurprisingly. She's crushed the edges of it- small fractures running from her fingers through the thin clay, visible beneath the white glaze. But it'll hold, for as long as she needs it to.</p><p>She turns away from the windows, away from the flicker of movement in the glass, and pushes away from her perch in search of wine.</p><p>She finds a glass as her patron rises, drawing the subject of his attentions giggling after him.</p><p>For a moment she debates just how sorry she’d be if he tipped himself into the fire. </p><p>"My fine fellows," he begins with an approximation of magnanimity. He sounds like a buffoon. "But what is a party-" he pauses for effect - "without dancing?"</p><p>The band had already been cued, the dinner tables and benches hauled away. The floor clears and a set piece begins, couples spilling haphazardly onto the floor and Ava retreats, as is her habit. She stations herself back towards the far wall and abandons the mask, the cocked hat as well.</p><p>With her charge engaged, perhaps she could check the perimeter again, take a moment to escape into the cold evening. She considers it: they are enclosed in the safety of his estate and she longs for the salt promise of the sea air; the clarity of the chill. There's a moment where she thinks she might already be able to taste it.</p><p>And then there's that scent of green again in the thick of the crowd, distinct against the competition of perfume and sweat and hearth. A movement beside her, bringing with it the breath of spring: crushed yew, holly berries and spilt sap.</p><p>Driftwood, not ocean.</p><p>She tilts her head enough to acknowledge her new companion and her heart thuds heavily in her chest, stomach tightening with something she might have thought of as - butterflies, once.</p><p>She breathes, and it passes.</p><p>She hadn't heard his approach. She'd been lost in her thoughts and the crowd, and the slip galls her, almost as much as her sudden unsteadiness.</p><p>It's the wine, she thinks. It's been a long time since she's indulged herself like this.</p><p>Her holly-crowned Cernunnos nurses his brandy glass as he looks out over the crowd. He's companionably close but still far enough that he would have to reach to touch the soft edge of her cloak- and, of course, he doesn't. </p><p>After a moment he slopes his shoulder towards her as if sharing with a confidant, speaking loud enough to be heard over the instruments:</p><p>"Look,” he says, and his voice is lower than she'd expected, and it lilts, familiarly and unfamiliarly, “at what a merry mess they make." </p><p>The half-drunk dancers stumble through their steps, laughing as they mangle the latest dance to seize the city. She has not paid attention to it. She didn’t intend to dance, after all.</p><p>Ava turns enough to cast her eye over him, lingering long enough for him to feel the weight of her assessment. Broad shoulders, slender neck; his long fingered hands emerge from overly-large sleeves, another fashion to accompany the ridiculous wigs and the powdered faces that amuse this age - although he, strikingly, is without both. </p><p>He is no taller than her- slightly shorter perhaps, if robbed of his crown. He smiles at her from beneath the woven leaves, and a sprig of berries slips towards his ear, red against his tawny cheek.</p><p>He is beautiful, she thinks.</p><p>She stills at that, thumb pressed against the fragile stem of the glass in her hand. She looks away, glancing unseeingly over the crowd .</p><p>She can feel him watching her profile, evidently having allowed her appraisal. His gaze is warm, and ever so subtly sharp.</p><p>"We have not been introduced," she says, eventually. She crosses her arms across her chest, holding her half-full glass of wine between them almost like a shield, as if she needed protecting; as if it could offer any protection if she did.</p><p>"Does it matter," he asks, smiling, the expression curving and bright and curious, "at a masquerade?"</p><p>She raises an eyebrow. “Does it not?”</p><p>"Perhaps,” he concedes, “however-" and he inclines his head as best he can without disrupting the wreath, flourishing his hands in an imitation of a bow, "You are in the company of the lord of misrule - and <em>as</em> the lord of misrule, therefore I decree that it does not.”</p><p>Those eyes again, glittering in the candlelight. The thick scent of the wreath and something else, something that’s purely him; the yew, she thinks and there's a comedy to it, the echo of this dying tradition. The delight of kings and paupers alike; farce and revelry, ecstasy.</p><p>But for the humanity of his blood she would wonder if he was fae. He has that wildfae energy about him, brilliant, reckless. </p><p>He straightens, noticing her amusement. His tone is teasing as he asks, "do you doubt me?"</p><p>Her eyebrows arch higher, her lips quirking upwards despite herself. "Would you have me trust you?"</p><p>It's not a disagreement, not quite, and he catches that, his grin returning.</p><p>"I don't believe I would. Nevertheless. I am delighted to make your acquaintance.”</p><p>He takes a step forward, a sway of movement that's almost accidental, close enough now for his sleeve to brush against her coat.</p><p>“And what is there to trust or mistrust,” he continues, “in the exchanging of names?"</p><p>There is much to distrust, she almost says, when dealing with the fair folk. Rosy-cheeked, with the ivy caught in his hair and pulling it free from its tie, he looks even more the sylvan, the wood nymph.</p><p>She says nothing, biting back the temptation. He accepts this, casually stepping that half-step away again and she feels somehow colder for it.</p><p>"I will start," he says easily. He turns to her, pressing his hand to his breast. "Beside my formal title, as already discussed - I am also known as Nathaniel Sewell." Another smile. "Officer of his royal majesty’s navy."</p><p>"...Your 'formal' title," she observes, "is unofficial."</p><p>"And yet fitting, is it not, for this feast of fools?" </p><p>She laughs - it is an apt description of their benefactor - and he grins, quick and brilliant, delighted.</p><p>"And on tonight of all nights,” he continues, sobering slightly “can we not be what we will?"</p><p>This Nathaniel Sewell is all bold lines in the light of the fires and the low chandelier weighted by the wax dripping down onto the floor below. The warmth has not yet left his cheeks and his gaze upon her is all the brighter in its unmasked directness.</p><p>Ava wonders what she looks like to him; what he thinks he sees. The woman in men's clothing, standoffish, removed? A damsel, perhaps (as ridiculous the thought). Or perhaps something closer to the truth: a person or creature set apart, outside of this world and its petty grievances, its mortal affairs.</p><p>Perhaps he senses the danger.</p><p>She feels her edges, rough and tempered. She feels her sharpness, the coiled strength in her folded arms, and the wine lingers in her mouth as much as the scent-taste of his blood, thrumming beneath whiskey-warmed skin.</p><p>The quiet lingers again, not uncomfortably.  After a moment he takes a deliberate step forward and then around, until he’s standing before her, his back to the crowd, and he offers her his hand, assuming the formal stance of someone inviting another to dance. </p><p>The latest song has indeed slowed to its inevitable conclusion. The musicians break briefly to tune their instruments in a mild cacophony in the corner.</p><p>"My mysterious friend," he smiles, "If you won't gift me your name, perhaps you would gift me this dance instead."</p><p>He pauses, holding the position, and offers her a raised brow. "It would be a terrible bore, after all, to attend a party and not dance at all."</p><p>She's considering it, she realises.</p><p>"I do not need to dance," she says.</p><p>"I would argue, that all beings who are able have that need." He smiles. "I promise to be a willing and considerate partner."</p><p>A naval officer, he'd said. The hand he offers is calloused across the palm - rope burns, perhaps; a sailor’s wear. He wears simple silver rings on his thumb, and his index finger.</p><p>
  <span>When she takes his hand she can feel the blood-warmth of the metal, the slight roughness to his fingers as they draw carefully closed around her own.</span>
</p><p>Her heartbeat trips, stirs. He dips his head to press a kiss to her knuckles - a brush of his lips, a hint of breath around that smile - “it will be my pleasure," - and - ahe will allow it, this time, with her ship in the harbour. The night so short.</p><p>She steps forward, twisting as she does to come alongside him, enjoying the responding trip of his pulse, his caught breath of surprise. She steps forward again, tugging at their shared grip. </p><p>Her question is passed over her shoulder. “Shall we, then?”</p><p>The honest delight that fills his expression has that fluttering warmth stir in her chest again.</p><p>She allows him to lead that first set, a version of the minuet, dodging the other haphazard couples.</p><p>She takes the lead for the second and she can feel his eyes on her as they step and spin closer and then away, hands touching, grazing - the curve of her waist, beneath the coats - the warmth of his arm through embroidered fabric.</p><p>Time slips by, ethereal, the blur of colour and the haze of movement, the overpowering wash of laughter and conversation and his hands in hers.</p><p>"I don't even know your name," he laughs as they come back together for another set.</p><p>Strands of his long hair are curling at his brow, some of the ivy lost and the holly askew. Ava is, perhaps, a little out of breath. He's briefly abandoned the full crown to the table holding her mask.</p><p>"Would you share it?" he asks, grinning, "or would you disappear into the ether if you did? Are you a spirit, more light than life?”</p><p>She considers it, before- "Ava. My name is Ava."</p><p>"Ava," he says her name like he's tasting it, savouring, and snags her hand to pull it to his lips once more - careless kisses, human and drunk on life and dancing and wine. "I will remember that. And I hope-” </p><p>He dips closer until she can almost feel the lick of his breath between them, taste the overwhelming scent of the holly.</p><p>His eyes glitter in the candlelight, filled with stolen stars.</p><p>“-I hope that you will also remember me."</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>It is almost five years later that she finds him again, hunting for the survivors of a wreck on a godforsaken beach in Tenerife.</p><p>Fragments of the ship have already washed up further along the island, spat out against the cliffs and the <em> playas</em>. There’s a savagery to the valley surrounding them, violence in the thrust of split stone and black sand and they pull more bodies up the beach, lining them up like tin soldiers.</p><p>They’d thought he was dead, too, when they found him on the rocks.</p><p>(In a way, he is.)</p><p>She is there when they haul him inland, past the line of the dead. When they pull him from the water he's barely conscious, wretched and shivering in his tattered, soaked uniform, eyelashes salt-crusted and lips cracked from thirst.</p><p>It’s only when the sea is nothing more than a murmur on the breeze that he manages to open his eyes.</p><p>They’re heavy-lidded and bloodshot, dull with pain and something else, darker and unfathomable - but she <em> knows them</em>, she knows him; an ocean and leagues of time apart.</p><p>His long hair, ivy wild, is tangled about his face. The blood soaked into his clothes is as red as the holly berries had been and there is too much, spread too regularly, for it to have been his own. That is not unexpected, for the newly turned.</p><p>Her cernunnos doesn’t see her. He looks up, head tipped back into the black sand, staring at the arch of the sky overhead. It’s dark, despite the hour, the clouds still churning with the retreating storm and she feels it when he starts to shake again; she tastes his fear, the terrified, blinding crest of panic.</p><p>She leans in and turns his face to hers, forcing him to look at her.</p><p>"You are safe," she tells him, the same refrain they'd been repeating. "Look at me, Nathaniel.” (his name, she realises, surprised she’d remembered it but knowing it to be true all the same) “You are safe."</p><p>Nathaniel is looking at her, now, brown eyes wide. His hand finds her own, locking tight. It's a deadman's grip. It's the grip of someone who thought himself neither alive nor dead.</p><p>"A-" it takes him a while to work his throat, to speak through his chattering teeth. When he succeeds, the word punches from him like a gasp. "Ava. <em> Ava </em>."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I am FOREVER on the Ava/Nate train.</p><p>And this has been in the mix since the end of lock down one in the UK and my eventual return to London (now finished after lock down two, partially isolating in the country under a mountain of work (from home) (aka 24/7 but there you go).</p><p>Aesthetics for this was absolutely Virginia Woolf's Orlando. The volcanic sand beach is playa el bollullo, which looks glorious formidable with the clouds rolled in. The Lord of Misrule is a massively fun thing to read up on, btw. </p><p>Originally inspired by <a href="https://ejunkiet.tumblr.com/post/627739177626255360/so-in-light-of-the-multiple-aus-set-in-the">this lovely piece of art</a> I commissioned alongside ejunkiet and the fact that yes, Ava was actually taller than Nate before his turning (I love this fact a lot).</p><p>Consider this the beginning of the poly route Ember Days series. <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27542269/chapters/67359454">Deltangam</a> and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25527127/chapters/61935667">by the dying embers</a> both take this as a starting point. </p><p>Also fits into <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26432140/chapters/64395982">EJ's wonderful Nate and Ava fics</a> (between us we are going to have so much Ava/Nate content I am Living-)</p><p>Listed as 1/2 as I'm already working on the next part and Dinah is definitely making an appearance.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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